In the prayer labs and workshops I conduct, the culmination of our time together has come to be the “glory seat.” The idea for the glory seat came to me at the first national retreat of Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship several years ago.

My prayer group was meeting outdoors under tall trees. We sat on little stools, benches, and chairs. I took one of the stools without a back and set it in the center of our circle and said, “This is the glory seat. Any one of you who wants to can come sit on it, and the rest of us’ll lay our hands on you, and God’ll pour his glory through us to you to bless you and to meet your every need.” The glory seat proved to be such a blessing that week that when I began leading prayer workshops and labs throughout the country, I always had the glory seat as a part of our final session. Something happens when a group of people make themselves available for God to pour himself through to bless another person. Those who lay hands on another experience it, and the person who receives the laying on of hands experiences it.

I want to share with you some experiences in laying on hands so that you can see the many different things that can happen when an individual or a group makes itself available for God to pour his blessings through.

At one retreat I led, I was showing the group the mechanics for the laying on hands. I asked for a volunteer to be our “patient.” and a woman came forward. She sat in a chair in the center of our circle. I said, “Relax, each one of you and become receptive to God. Just breathe deeply and evenly and let go of tension. We’ll take time to prepare ourselves to become channels for God to pour himself through.”

I suggested to the woman in the chair that she breathe deeply, too, and that she relax as much as possible and hold a receptive attitude. When it seemed that there was a feeling of relaxation present, I said, “Now we’ll hold this same feeling and very quietly get up and walk over to the glory seat and lay our hands on our patient. If you can’t touch her comfortably, just touch someone who’s touching her,” and we moved over quietly, laying our hands on her, maintaining an attitude of relaxation and receptivity. Then I said, “Now, hold the picture of yourself as a tube which lets the love and power and healing and glory of God just pour through it. Don’t think about anything but that you’re letting God flow through you.”

There seemed to be a heightening of power in the room as we stood with our hands on the woman. Then I said, “Thank you, Father, that you’ve used us as channels to pour your healing and blessing and glory through to your daughter. Thank you.” and all the people said, “Amen, amen, amen.” The rest of the group joined in on the amens.

We moved quietly back to our places and the woman got up and walked to her chair in the corner. We continued the workshop with another woman sharing with us a technique of healing. During her sharing, the “patient” came up to me and said, “I think I’ve been healed.” I turned to look at her, and I saw tears in her eyes. “I’ve had bursitis in my arm so badly that I couldn’t raise it to my shoulder, but look,” and she lifted her arm up into the air and began to rotate it. We two just stood there, thanking God for what he’d done. Then, when the demonstration was over, we shared with the group what had happened and spent some time in rejoicing.

At one of the prayer workshops, the minister of the church had been in a car accident the week before and had received a whiplash. He’d been under a doctor’s care. He sat in the glory seat and literally felt the pulsating power of God flowing through us and was healed. His whole ministry’s changed. He’s begun talking to his congregation about personally experiencing God and his power and the need to balance love for humanity with love for God. Many people in his church are experiencing God.

My daughter, Susan, once came into my room where I was working at my typewriter and said that she had a tummyache. I had her lie down on my bed and I laid my hands on her tummy and visualized that I was just a channel for God to pour himself through to her. I sat quietly for a while. Soon she said, “I think I’ll go watch television,” and she got up and left.

Later though, she came back into my room and said, “Mommy, what did you do to take the tummyache away?” I said, “Why, I just imagined that I was a tube through which God was flowing into you to make you OK.” “Oh,” she said and left the room.

A minister I know has a number of prayer groups in his church. One group began experimenting with the laying on of hands. They decided to make individual experiments in which each one would quietly put his hands on a beloved person while that person slept, and would just offer himself as a channel for God to pour through to bless the person. They wouldn’t tell God what to do, they’d just be channels for whatever he wanted to do.

One woman later reported that her husband worked in a job that was very demanding of his eyes. He began going blind and the doctor assured him that he’d need to learn Braille because he’d eventually be completely blind. The woman began to lay her hands on her husband after he was asleep and saw herself as a channel for God to bless him. Several weeks went by, and then the man was examined by his doctor, who examined him not only once, but twice. He finally told the man that the first diagnosis had been wrong, that the man’s eyes were improving and that there was no need for him to continue learning Braille.

The woman brought the good news to the prayer group. Because she’d felt that the husband wouldn’t be sympathetic with what she’d done, she never told him of laying her hands on him each night and being a channel for God to bless him. She is convinced that the diagnosis had been correct and that God had worked a miracle through the laying on of hands.

On my first trip to India I ate the local food and drank the local water wherever I went. But when I was in New Delhi a few days before my departure for the States, I had a severe case of diarrhea. That night after I’d tucked in the mosquito netting around my bed, I laid my hands on my stomach and imagined that God was flowing through my hands to heal me.

I fell asleep and when I awakened in the morning, I was well.

One night a friend and I took the night shift from eleven to seven with a high school girl who’d been in a car accident. When we arrived at the hospital I saw the poor girl in a bed that had the sides raised on it. She looked like an animal in a cage. Her head had been shaved and a little stubble had grown out on it. She was writhing all over the bed because of gas pains. I don’t know why I did what I did, but I walked directly over to her, put my hands through the bars, laid them on her stomach and said, “Take the pain and the cause of the pain away in the Name of Jesus.” Her legs straightened out, she settled into a comfortable position and fell asleep and slept the whole night through.

A woman I know was going to be interviewed on a television program. She had been used often as a channel through which God poured his healing. As she and the interviewer walked down the hall together to the studio, she lovingly put her hands on the other woman’s back.

After the program, the interviewer told her that she’d been having trouble with her back, but when my friend put her hand on it as they walked down the hall, the pain had just disappeared and she felt just fine.

Another woman called me one day to say that she’d discovered a lump in her breast. She asked me to pray for her, so right then on the phone I prayed aloud. When she came early to the prayer group a day or so later, she asked if I’d pray again and have the laying on of hands. I laid my hands on her and saw myself as a channel through which God was pouring healing. She and I both felt a warmth in my hands and a heightened awareness of God’s presence with us.

She called me a few days later to rejoice with me. The lump had begun diminishing in size immediately and was now completely gone.

She said she’d had a lump about a year before which hadn’t gone away, and after two weeks she’d gone to a doctor. He found that it was benign and had aspirated it. She felt our prayers this time and particularly the laying-on-of-hands prayer had allowed God to flow into her and heal her.

I met a man at a retreat who was deaf in his right ear. He explained that he’d had an operation quite a long time ago and that part of his ear had been removed. I got the feeling that I should pray for the man, but I felt foolish at the thought of asking him for he’d explained that the operation had made it impossible for him to hear. Yet the feeling was so strong within me that I finally asked if he’d mind if I prayed for him. He smiled indulgently and said, “You may pray for me, but it won’t do any good.” I rounded up three friends who believed in the power of prayer, and we took the man outside the auditorium. We had him sit on the runningboard of an old car that was in the parking lot. I put my index fingers in his ears; Barbara stood to the man’s right, one hand on him and one on me; Jean stood behind me with her hands on my shoulders, and Jack stood behind her with his hands on her shoulders. I began to pray aloud, “Oh, thank you, Lord —” but that was as far as I got.

Suddenly the air became charged with power.

Something powerful hit Jack in his back, passed through him to Jean, hit her and passed through her to me, and passed through me into that man’s ear. We all began to thank God.

The man asked if he could try to listen to my watch. He could hear the ticking with the ear that had been deaf. The next morning when I saw him, he literally shone with joy. He could still hear out of the ear. Several months later I had a letter from him saying that he was now being used as a channel to heal others.

I have one friend who’s a channel of healing for me. She isn’t aware that healing is flowing through us and can hardly believe her eyes when I’m healed, but if I have an ache or pain anywhere, I just ask her to lay her hands on me and I’m well. It’s so easy to picture God’s healing flowing through her to me.

A woman’s daughter-in-law was expecting her first child and was in her eighth month of pregnancy. She’d been extremely well, but one day she noticed a bad taste in her mouth.

Her left eye watered and her mouth drooped on the left side. Several days before she’d had some dental work done and thought it might be a reaction to the novocaine. When she talked with her dentist, he assured her that this couldn’t be and suggested that she see her obstetrician. Within a few days, her face on the left side had become paralyzed. The eyelid drooped, the mouth was contorted, and she had difficulty in speaking and swallowing. She consulted her doctor who said that the paralysis involved the seventh facial muscle. At first he minimized the seriousness of her condition, saying that it might last several months or longer and asked her to see a specialist. The only medication he prescribed at that time was vitamin B. Later he referred to her condition as Bell’s Palsy and indicated that she was thoroughly afflicted.

The woman was in despair for her daughter-in-law. She kept her constantly in her thoughts and prayers. Then one day I was visiting in her city and happened to be where she worked.

She had previously attended a prayer retreat I’d led and so she knew me. When she saw me, she immediately asked if she could talk with me, and we found a quiet room. She told me what had happened with her daughter-in-law and asked me to pray for her. I asked her if she would sit as proxy for her daughter-in-law while I laid my hands on her and prayed. I stood behind her and placed my hands on her face. She told me later that my hands became very warm and the heat from them penetrated her face. I stood seeing myself as a channel for God to pour his healing through. Somehow I was aware that something was happening.

The woman later told me that in a few minutes she was aware of a great sense of relief and was filled with a sense of serenity and with the assurance that something good had happened.

I thanked God that he’d poured through me to heal the young woman, gave the mother-in-law a hug, and went on my way.

Several weeks later I had a phone call from the woman. Her daughter-in-law had finally seen the specialist who’d been advised of the extent of the facial damage and the seriousness of the young woman’s condition. When he examined her, these are the words he used, “This is a miracle. I’ve never seen any person with Bell’s Palsy recover this quickly.” His examination showed that she was on the road to recovery with only 3 percent paralysis left in her face.

Her face had begun to improve from the time we’d prayed for her. She even told her mother-in-law that a strange thing happened to her at that time. Her face had tingled, and that was the first time she’d had any sensation since she’d been afflicted. Only later did the woman tell her that we’d prayed for her. The incident ends with a complete recovery for the young woman.

In the prayer labs and workshops we often stand in a circle and face to the right, laying our hands on the shoulders of the person now in front of us. We thank God for that person and visualize ourselves as channels through which God is pouring blessings to that person.

We stay in this attitude for a while, and then we turn around and place our hands on the shoulders of the person who had been behind us blessing us, and we let God’s blessings pour into that person.

Other times, while we’re sitting we imagine that the power of God is flowing around our circle, first to the right, and we visualize it flowing through our hands, going around the circle until it comes back to us, then flowing out and around through the circle again and again: We then visualize it flowing to the left, going around the circle and back, out again and back, and out a third time and back. When it returns the third time, we visualize the love and blessing and power of God in us.

I was asked, to lead a prayer group at a one-day Ashram and used the touching or linking of hands and the visualizing of the power of God flowing around our circle. Several weeks later I was at another meeting, and a woman came up to, me and introduced herself. She said, “I was in your prayer group at the Ashram. I’d had sinus trouble so badly that I hadn’t planned to attend the Ashram that day, but I thought I might as well be miserable there as at home. You know, when we joined hands in our circle my sinuses cleared up, and I’ve had no problem with them since then.”

I believe every contact we make with our hands can be a contact for blessing. Every time we’re introduced to someone we can think as we’re shaking hands, “Thanks, Father, for flowing through me to bless this person.” Every time we lay a hand on the shoulder of a friend, we can think, “Thanks, Father, for blessing this friend through me.” Every time we are touched by another, we can think, Thanks, Father, for blessing me through this person.”

Touching, then, takes on a holiness.

Begin to open yourself to God to let him flow through. Be aware of his power flowing out from your hands. If you can’t feel it, then picture it streaming out, and send it to people you know who are in need of love or healing or blessing.

As you work with your hands, see the love and blessing of God going into your work. Remind yourelf often as you use your hands that each person or thing you touch is being blessed because God flows through you. As you do this, God has an open channel through which to pour his blessing and glory. The point of contact between him and another can be your hands.